Willy's Bar & Grill: Who Mourns for Lunkheads?
by Philip S
Summary: Episode 2: The regulars at Willy's deal with the aftermath of the Harvest. Willy brought big beer glasses from the Oktoberfest.


Willy's Bar & Grill: Who Mourns For Lunkheads? 1/1  
  
by Philip S.  
  
Summary: Willy's regulars deal with the aftermath of the Harvest.  
  
Spoilers: The Harvest  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Disclaimer: The characters appearing herein are (mostly) original creations, but everything is based on Joss Whedon's work. Characters from BtVS are mentioned and may appear now and then.  
  
#  
  
"May he rest in peace," was the first thing Martha heard upon entering Willy's Bar & Grill, followed by the loud clanking of glasses. It was in the middle of the night, usually a time when most of Willy's regulars were out doing their stuff in the cemeteries, but tonight the place was packed.  
  
Several tables had been pushed together to form one big surface and about a dozen or so vampires sat around it, all of them with large beer glasses in hand. Martha recognized the glasses as 'Masskruege', a souvenir Willy had brought with him from the Oktoberfest in Germany last year. Each held almost half a gallon of beer and Willy got them out only for very special occasions.  
  
Not feeling quite comfortable with disturbing the vampires, most of whom she did not really know that well, Martha decided to get her information elsewhere. A hulking figure was leaning against the bar, towering at least seven feet tall. That alone would have been enough to draw some stares, but the figure was also covered in fur and had a wolf's head instead of a human one.  
  
"Hi, Shaggy," she greeted Willy's bouncer. "What's the occasion?"  
  
Shaggy, a nickname he had finally accepted after years of useless protest, looked at Martha, baring his teeth in a smile that would have sent most sane men running for the hills at a moment's notice. Martha knew him well enough to just smile back, though.  
  
"It's a wake," he growled at her, lacking other tones of voice to work with. "Didn't you hear about the little party at the Bronze last night?"  
  
"Yeah, I heard something. Bikers on PCP, or so the message goes. Figured that these boys were involved somehow."  
  
Shaggy laughed. Martha was one of the few regulars at Willy's who, for the most part, led a completely normal human life. She had no trouble blending in with all the upstanding people of Sunnydale, at least most of the time. She just got a bit of trouble those three nights of the month when the full moon was up.  
  
An ugly rumour said that the full moon also coincided with 'that' time of the month for her.  
  
Many had mistaken Shaggy for a werewolf as well, a mistake that was easy to make. He was a full demon wolf, though, and never looked human, full moon or no full moon. Apart from that, though, he was a mild-mannered fellow and never hurt a fly. Unless the fly happened to make trouble at Willy's, that was when he could get temperamental.  
  
Martha, for her part, was a werecat. Right now she was covered in black fur from head to toe and wore a special pair of pants that had a strategically cut hole for the long tail she always grew these nights. Her eyes had turned a deep yellow and whiskers twitched with every movement of her mouth.  
  
She liked being a were, mostly because the fur tended to make her look a lot younger than she was, hiding her wrinkly skin. Her eyesight also returned to being almost 20/20 at these times and she could leave her thick glasses at home.  
  
"Well," Shaggy got back to the explanation, "it seems a few of the boys wanted to hold some kind of ritual last night. Lots of blood, raising hell on Earth, ending the dominance of humanity, that kind of stuff. Only they got their asses kicked."  
  
"Did not!" One of the vampires had overheard them and rose on unsteady feet, precariously holding on to his large and heavy glass of beer. "We were hic great, I tell you! If it wasn't for that damn hic Slayer!"  
  
"Slayer?" Martha asked, looking at Shaggy.  
  
"Vampire's bogeyman," he explained. "Comes to slay little vampires in their coffins if they don't behave."  
  
"We don't sleep in coffins," another vampire protested.  
  
Martha looked across the assembled vampires and finally spotted one she knew well enough to approach. Harvey was sitting at the far end of the table, seeming far more interested in deriving the glass in front of him of its contents than taking part in the discussion. Martha padded over to him.  
  
"Hi, Harv," she greeted him.  
  
Harvey looked up, needing a moment to focus. These big beer glasses really were a fine thing. The only problem was that, being so big, the beer inside often started growing stale before one had the chance to drink all of it. It was an interesting challenge to find just the right drinking tempo to prevent that from happening while still enjoying the brew.  
  
"Martha," he finally recognized her. "Full moon again already?"  
  
Harvey knew that Martha only came into Willy's those nights when she was furry. He had often tried to explain to her that she was too careful. Vampires could smell weres even when they were in human form and no self- respecting blood drinker would ever drink from one of them. Were blood tasted really funny, and not in a good way.  
  
Come to think of it, though, how many self-respecting vampires were there in Sunnydale anyway?  
  
"First night," Martha just said, pulling up a chair. "So I take it the party at the Bronze did not go all that well?"  
  
"That's what they tell me," Harvey answered, taking another sip. He knew that Martha did not have a problem with vampires' usual pastimes, such as killing, maiming, and slaughtering. She figured that any human being that was stupid enough to live at the Hellmouth and venture out after dark deserved no better.  
  
She was also the writer, editor, and sole reporter for Sunnydale's monthly demon newsletter. It was the main reason she always visited Willy's those three nights of the full moon. It's where she got all the dirt for her growing audience to read.  
  
"It wasn't fun," the vampire to Harvey's left said. Martha recognized him as Daniel Fleetfoot. "I mean, yeah, it was fun at first, but then the Slayer turned up and things turned sour. Wasn't fun then."  
  
"So who are you mourning?"  
  
"Luke," Harvey said, sounding a bit sullen. "Big lunk bit the big one."  
  
Luke? Martha dimly remembered Harvey telling her about a guy called Luke once before. After a moment it came to her.  
  
"Didn't you say to me he was a stupid waste of space?"  
  
Someone at the table laughed out loud, sending droplets of beer flying. Several sounds of agreement could be heard.  
  
"He was a stupid son of a bitch, that's for sure," one of them said. "You should have seen how he got dusted." The vampire exploded into a fit of giggles and spilled some of his beer as he pounded his fist on the table.  
  
"The Slayer got him good," Daniel agreed, though he looked a bit sullen. "It was kinda anticlimactic, you know? I mean ... he got this sigil thing on his head, killed humans left and right, gave a big fight on the stage, almost got her at one time with this bearhug thing of his."  
  
"So what happened?" Martha asked, already considering how she was going to write this down for the latest newsletter. Maybe she should do some research on this Slayer first. Most of the vampires here seemed too tanked to giver her much of a lesson in vampire lore.  
  
Daniel sighed deeply, looking deep into his beer glass. "Sunrise," he mumbled.  
  
"What?"  
  
"He means," another vampire said, "that she tricked the stupid blockhead into thinking it was sunrise. I mean, hey! It was maybe an hour after sundown! Hell, forget that! We can smell the sunrise, you know? And while he cowered from the 'lethal glare' of a streetlamp she staked him with a drumstick. That was all she wrote for Luke."  
  
He finished by toasting with several other guys.  
  
"Stupid bastard," Harvey muttered.  
  
"So why are you mourning him if he was such a stupid bastard?"  
  
All the vampires turned their eyes on Martha, who suddenly felt a little intimidated. Vampires might not drink were blood, but that did not mean they would not do something nasty to her regardless.  
  
"He was the stupidest bastard ever to walk the Earth," one of them finally said.  
  
"But he was hic one of us," another finished, then added, "unfortunately."  
  
"It's a vampire thing," Harvey explained, though he sounded like he would rather be elsewhere, drinking his beer in peace. "One of us dies, we toast."  
  
"Takes a special kind of vamp to make a living on the Hellmouth," one of the group proposed a toast.  
  
"Damn right," another added.  
  
"Luke was a lunkhead, but he was our lunkhead."  
  
"Damn right!"  
  
"We're gonna get the Slayer for this," Daniel said, getting into the spirit. Unfortunately no one said 'damn right' this time. Instead everyone was glaring at him.  
  
"Aren't we?" he asked, ducking a bit under the stares.  
  
"Kid," Harvey sighed, "you really got a lot to learn."  
  
"But ... but she's our enemy, right? Shouldn't we ... you know ... do something about that?"  
  
Harvey shook his head and draped an arm around Daniel's shoulders. He would not normally do such a thing, but he was quite tanked and feeling generous tonight.  
  
"Kid, let me explain something to you, okay? There are two kinds of vampires when it comes to Slayers."  
  
"Damn right," someone added.  
  
"There are the smart ones like us."  
  
"What?" a vampire who had seemed unconscious a moment before looked up.  
  
"Not you, dude!"  
  
"Oh, okay!" He put his head back down on the table.  
  
"As I was saying, there are the smart ones, they stay away from the Slayer."  
  
"And the others?"  
  
"The others are guys like Luke."  
  
Daniel looked at him, puzzled for a moment. "Stupid?" he finally proposed.  
  
"That, too. Mostly dead, though. Really dead."  
  
"Oh!"  
  
Harvey considered his work done and went back to contemplating his beer again. Martha, who had listened to the whole exchange, was busy making notes on the small notepad she carried with her. It was not all that easy with those long claws she always grew during the full moon, but she had practice.  
  
"So is this Slayer here to stay?" she asked.  
  
Harvey shrugged. "I guess so. I mean, look at this place."  
  
Martha followed the motion of his arm, taking in the various vampires and demons that populated Willy's Bar & Grill.  
  
"So ... what are you gonna do about it?"  
  
Harvey shook his head. Why did all these people expect him to do something all the time? Maybe he should put the record straight on that.  
  
"See, Martha, I got this philosophy about living on the Hellmouth. Living in the abstract sense, I mean."  
  
THE END 


End file.
